The Great Wall of Amager

Amager is the name of the island that we live on.
Pronounced 'Ah mah' - now you know.

In my last blog i gave you a quick teaser line about our new fence. Boy that one sentence sure did the trick. Not just some of you but ALL of you said: Hey Eddie, com'on with that story you promised to tell about your new fence.

Ok - hold your horses. Here we go-------

When we bought this house a few years ago among the many things we liked about it was that the yard was for the most part enclosed and private. The fence on the back boarder line is made of wood but covered with ivy. It looked very very nice, neat and trimmed. The only exception to this was one hole in the ivy near the neighbor's back side of garage wall and the wall of the garage itself was exposed and ugly.

After buying the house, I went to the fence and tried to pull a few stems of ivy and direct them to fill in the hole and also lead a few other strands of ivy to cover up the ugly gray block wall of the back side of the garage so that all would be green and even.

A short time later i notice my green fence is doing a little dance. Was it a big bird or a cat playing around on the fence inside of all the greenery causing the ivy to move around? No - there it was - the cause of the mysterious self moving ivy; my neighbor.

Hey Per, i asked, what'cha doin' ? His answer was just as mysterious as the fence jumping around all on it's own. What i did get out of his mumbling answer was that the fence was old and rotten and needs replacing.

I told him that i was trying to fill up the hole - the same one that he was creating. How making a hole in the vine so that we could see into each others backyard didn't make any sense to me and i certainly didn't see how it was going to help the rotting wood.

Within time, the hole did start to fill in and the back side of the garage was doing very nicely. One stem had managed to spread out almost all over the entire upper side of the wall. The bottom was covered by other plants and a cheap wooden panel fence which was already there in the yard when we moved in. I just had to strategically set it in place to cover up as much gray block wall as possible.

Just as things were starting to develop nicely, my neighbor was putting yet another hole in the ivy again in the same exact area. This time i snapped at Per and told him to knock it off! I don't want that hole in the fence! His response was: "we are not getting enough light for our flowers."

Now i know that man is nuts. Unless he is Indiana Jones, the only way he is going to get sunlight through that hole and down to his flowers is with a wooden staff with a cut Ruby on it to diffract the light down to the flowers.

This story repeated itself 2 more times. The following reasons were his Raspberries were not getting enough light (which are over 25 feet away from the whole he kept making) and the next reason was just as dumb as the first but i can't recall the details of it at the moment.

Then one summer i notice that a lot of vines throughout the fence were turning brown. What the heck is going on? And there he is again; my stupid neighbor just cutting and pulling out randomly strands of ivy. But this time i am so angry and going nuts and asking, " what in gods name are you doing? Didn't i tell you not to fool around with the fence?" Well it's so old and rotten, he says, that he is afraid that it's going to fall down on his granddaughter (whom screams wildly and endlessly every summer while we are trying to have a nice, cozy barbecue in our backyard.

So what i do next is panic, grab my ladder, lean it on the fence and hang my entire body over the rotting fence to see what the damage is on his side that he is creating. To my surprise, his side of the ivy covered fence could easily replace the acres of missing Brazilian rain forest. So taking charge of the situation i end up with my garden shears clipping his side of the fence. All that i clip i end up throwing it back into my own yard and clean up the mess, filling up many a garden bags.

I end up doing this to try to contain as much as possible of my side of the ivy and in order to end up with as little as possible dead, brown vines. The man's entire yard is one of those yards that have never seen what a broom or rake looks like. Why it was so necessary to ruin our fence will remain a sad mystery to me. But the worst of it; not only did he just randomly cut vines here and there throughout the entire 82 foot long fence, he cut the one vine that had finally taken over and covered the back side of his ugly garage wall. I was of course a psychotic mess.

But the tragedy does not end here. Last spring time i went out joyously to finally get my hands in the dirt after a long boring gray winter. I take a look at the fence and.... What?! What the H........! OH MY GOD ! The bastard had actually started removing planks of the wooden fence. It got so bad that now, not only could you look through the fence but you could actually walk through the fence.

There are of course laws about neighbors feuding over garden borderlines, walls, fences and hedges. Per was clearly breaking the law about damaging a common wall. The law also states that a common wall must be taken care of by both parties. He could argue that he was just try to take care of it and that i just kept hindering him from taking care of his side of the fence. I think a judge could have easily agreed with either my neighbor or myself. It was all a matter of how you wanted to look at it. The law also says that if there is going to be a change in the wall that both neighbors have to agree before any work can be carried out. I am sure that a judge would agree that removing actual planks of fencing would be a violation since he did not discuss this with me before proceeding to basically destroy the fence.

Having the experience with the chicken, we know that doing the court thing would be dragged out for at least a year.

What it all comes down to is this: the man destroyed the fence and then extremely surprisingly painted the sore and tired looking, pale black wooden trim on his house to a very pretty mild green. That's at least nice to look at. And then miracles of miracles - he had a stroke. Destined and bound to a wheel chair. Thank god. A little late but at least he can't do any more damage.

Per finally came home from the hospital. Three weeks went by and Jens and I went over to the neighbor to sit and talk about the fence to see what we could do about it. The wife had to do all the talking because Per could barly mumble. We agreed to a new fence. They like the fence that we have in our carport. It's an open, airy type of fence. I would rather have had a completely closed fence. But the deal was that she - the neighbor's wife - would get 2 handyman estimates and we would get 2 handyman estimates. Whoever was the cheapest was the winner and we would split the cost fifty fifty.

Getting the estimates was a bit of work in itself because i wanted to try to save as much of the greenery as possible. A guy from work turned me onto a buddy handyman that he knows of. He came over to the house and said that he would have to get rid of all the stuff in the way of the new fence. Working around the green ivy vine he couldn't do. It would be too much work he said and too much money. What made me really upset was that he would be willing to work something out with the 3 apples trees that were directly on the boarder line. The neighbor woman - whom Jens thinks is a rather sweet woman and ".... too bad for her that she is married to such a bastard." "They are both creepy people to me," i say to Jens, "She was rather bitchy to me when i tried to talk to her about the apple trees." Long story short - all 3 trees are gone and i hope both Per and his wife rot in ivy hell.

I hated the fact that i hate my neighbors. I know it's wrong and sinful. How could you hate a poor man so ill and bound to a wheel chair. How can I not have compassion for a woman that has to now take care of the house and garden and her wheel chaired husband? How is it that i can have so much hate for these people that i don't even know and over a dumb fence. How good is that for my soul? What would Jesus do?

It was Easter time and after a conversation with my mother i was really tired of my hatred towards my neighbors. It's easy to love your friends but god wants us to love our enemies. So i was thinking that since their yard is such a mess and since i am so good at cleaning yards, i could spiff up their place in just a few hours. That would take the edge off of everything. I would find a new found love for my neighbors and god would take delight and bless my soul.

Trying to think of a day and moment when i could just pop over and surprise them with a spiffed up yard, was when that bitchy woman came up to me and demand that those apple trees be removed here and now. I snapped at her and said, " F U lady! Clean up your own damn mess!"

Suddenly i was ready to have that new wall built. The handyman called and gave me a price for a 1.8 meter high fence. 1.8 is standard and is the law in all of Denmark. But we found out that in Copenhagen you can have it higher if the neighbors agree. This was like sold out concert tickets appearing in the hand at the last minute. "You want it 1.80, Eddie, or 2 meters?", the handyman asked me. "I want it 2 meters", i said, "but i don't know what the neighbor wants". "It's not that difficult,Eddie", the handyman said, "just go and ask her what she wants."

The neighbor lady had just come home on her lunch break. Being that there was nothing between our backyards i called out to her and asked if she wanted the fence 1.8 or 2 meters. "Well 1.8 of course", she said, "that's the law." Then i explained the Copenhagen exception to her and then i pointed out to her that the fence in our carport that she likes is 2 meters high and the tool shed in the other neighbors yard that will met up to our new fence and their garage is 2 meters high. So immediately she agreed to 2 meters. I told the handyman and within a week he had it done.

The 3 boarder line apple tress that i liked so much are now gone. The fence that i was afraid of being dominating in the yard is broken up with Jens's fantastic idea of hanging baskets. It looks great.

The most funny part of all of this is how the neighbors kept complaining that the old fence was taking too much light from their back yard flowers and berries. Jens and i keep laughing because first of all the neighbors yard is about 20 centimeters lower than our yard plus the added Copenhagen exception of another 20 centimeters is a total of 40 extra centimeters higher fence on their side than on our side. Even the original green ivy fence wasn't at the 1.80 mark. We laughed with back stabbing joy when when we asked the neighbors wife how she is enjoying the new fence to which the only thing she could say was ,"it sure is high."

The following day the neighbor lady came home from a walk and push with her wheelchair bound husband. I shouted from the window, "It's so tall, you can see it on Google Earth!"

The fence is up, the baskets are up and the other existing plants around have grown up to visually cover a lot of the fence as long as it's not winter. Feeling a bit dreadful that i still am so ornery towards my neighbors i came home with arms full of a 'peace offering' to my neighbors. " Look Jens", i said, "6 new ivy plants for the fence - that should make the neighbors happy."





This is the backyard before we started to work on it. The ugly black house belong to the neighbors.

This is the fence in all it's glory before the neighbors attacked it. And the next pix is a close up. Directly behind the umbrella is the 4th apple tree that is not on the boundary line. So this apple tree we were able to save.

Click onto any of the photos to make them larger.

Notice this little lawn terrace is not in the first pix. That Jens is such a creative guy. These cement blocks came out of the front yard when we updated the walkway.

Here you can see some of the vines starting to turn brown. Eventually many more turned brown as the neighbor worked slowly over a longer period of time. It takes a bit of time before a clipped vine actually starts to whither. Notice the pale boring black trim of the neighbor house.

Above - is the garage and one of the apple trees that was removed. This is where the whole thing started. Here is where the original hole was - about the size of your head. Now look how big of a hole the neighbor clipped into the hedge. The hole is about the same size of the neighbor ( if you get my drift )

Above - this is the wooden panel that was here at the house when we moved in. I placed it in front of the garage and trailed a vine to grow onto it and up above it to cover the garage wall. At the bottom of the picture you can see where the neighbor just cut over the vine - and it's not even in his yard - that jerk!


This is where i first started to noticed that actual planks of wood were missing. You can see right through the greenery because the wooden fence is missing here and in many other places as well.







The neighbor claimed that the fence was too dangerous and afraid that it was going to fall on his grandchild. Here i am standing on one of the planks. If it's strong enough for me to stand on and covered up by a super strong web of sticky vines, and 3 trees, there is no way it's going to fall on any screaming child.

Eventually so many planks of wood were removed that the weight of the plant started to sag. There was nothing to hold it up.
Now we are able to see the neighbors coming and going out of their back door and they too can see us while we are in our back yard on the terrace trying to eat in peace.

Above - Here you can see that all the greenery is now removed including the 3 trees that were on the border line. At least the ugly black trim is gone and is now a nice green color. In the foreground is a temporary fence to keep the dog in our yard and hopefully keep those damn chickens out of our yard - the last thing we need around here is the Avian flu.


Below - I told you about all the bags that it took when i was cutting the Brazilian jungle - well this is not it. This is the stuff that i was trying to save to get a good start onto the new fence but the handyman said it would have to come out and so i did cut it all to the ground and here it is. Plus lots of bamboo that died on the same day all over the entire country. Too bad cuz it was beautiful.

All this to say:
Hey - check out my new fence!












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Thanks for reading.